This week marks our first foray into day camps for the Woo. He was very excited at the prospect, and particularly keen on the camp that we chose for this week “Buggin’ Out”. It’s an afternoon camp, so yesterday morning was spent at home with Willy. He talked about all the cool things that he would find, planned to bring his magnifying glass to see them better, and had his dad read one of his bug books right before leaving, so he would be ready. He went right in to the camp, happy to get going.

At the end of the afternoon, Willy picked him up. He came running to me and was happy, so I asked for a report. He got a strange look on his face and said “there are no bugs at bug camp, it’s just a play with other kids camp”. He was more than a little disappointed, and mentioned it a few more times. In his descriptions of the day, he gave a pretty good list of the things he did, and assured me that he had fun, despite the fact that there were no bugs.

Willy and I talked about it, and both felt that there must be some mistake. Either we read the description wrong, or they had him in the wrong room. Last night I re-read the flyer for the camp, which reads “Come and explore the wild world around us, from the very tall to the very small! Together we’ll search high and low, far and wide for the largest creature to the tiniest fly.” While it doesn’t explicitly say we will hunt bugs, I still felt that there should be some component that involved bugs.

I brought Woo to camp this afternoon, and dropped him of a few minutes early, in hopes of catching one of the leaders to see what was up. Woo was wearing his bug shirt (at his request), and told me that he hoped they would see some bugs today. I got him settled an grabbed one of the leaders. She was shocked to hear that we expected bugs, and that Woo was disappointed to not have seen or heard of any the day before. She explained that they focused on all living things, and might make a bug craft today. She also let me know that they had arranged for a special reptile event at the camp later this week, but that it was in the morning session, the session for which he is not registered. None of these give the little man the bugs he so wants to catch and learn about.

I am still open to the outcome, but our first experience with camp is somewhat of a letdown. It’s more like a play group or daycare, both of which we already have in place. While this is helping him to go off in new situations on his own, I still feel it’s not what we ordered. There better be some science at science camp next week. For now, it looks like I’ll be doing some bug hunting with my lil man.